Hey Diddle Diddle - The Bighead Killer Riddle
by Citywriter84
Summary: Jack must solve a series of fiendishly difficult riddles if he is to save his girlfriend Nadine from the Bighead killer. But time is swiftly running out...! Based on the Bighead Killer comics.
1. Chapter 1

**Bighead's Riddle**

Jack was excited to read of the legend of the Big Head killer in the newspaper collection at his desk in the bedroom that evening. He studied the collection of Big Head news cuttings on his desk avidly. They told of the bloody history of that maniac in a grotesque green mask that caused murder and mayhem wherever he appeared. And he had so many forms. Bighead was not even always a man.

His attention was so absorbed by Big Head, that his girlfriend Nadine was feeling lonely. "Jack, come to bed."

"Can you believe this?" Jack held up a cutting with the lurid green face of Big Head leering out of the page as if it were about to jump out. "Big Head may have morphed - changed his body. Swollen to massive proportions."

Nadine pushed her thick dark brown hair away from her face and glanced over. She gave a little shudder at the sight of Big Head. "Jack... you keep talking about Big Head's body..." she flushed pink. "Um... do you fancy him?"

"What? No." That question caught him completely off guard.

He climbed back into bed with her. "You are the love of my life. Bighead is just an unhealthy fixation, like a bad habit." He looked at Nadine's freckled nose and cheeks, her soft brown eyes, her lush, thick dark hair and her pale, curvaceous form. How could he wish for anyone else? But even though they made sweet love that night, thoughts of Bighead still troubled him...

* * *

The next evening he pored over the newer clippings. They told of the green horror resurfacing and becoming bloated... Bighead kept resurfacing in different places. Jack thought about his own fantasies of great power. They had troubled him for a long, long time. How he wishes he had the power to right society's wrongs.

"All that power - why can't you do good with it?" he asked the picture of Bighead. "I want the power. I deserve it. I want it to come to me." He repeated that three times over before going to bed where Nadine waited. He owed it to her to tell her what was troubling him. "Listen Nadine, I have a confession to make..." he hesitated. She gazed at him with wide brown eyes.

But at that moment there came a terrible crash. A monstrous shape poured in through the broken window and solidified to become a shocking montrosity - Bighead in the flesh - and so much flesh. The monster not only had a huge, green head with distorted features, apparently made of a brightly coloured rubber, but his entire form was now bloated and distended to grotesque proportions. He must have weighed hundreds of pounds. Nadine screamed and Jack remained motionless, petrified.

"My power is wanted here," the ghastly apparition crowed, his voice cracked and hideous, "where there is a will there is a way." He glared at Jack, his eyes glowing red from within like burning coals. "A little incentive for you, true believer. I will take your girlfriend and you can only find her if you follow my trail." He gathered up Nadine who screamed at the top of her lungs until he conjured ropes and a gag. Jack gave a cry of protest, but was blasted backwards by an invisible force. "Follow the trail. Tell the police and the girl will pay. The beginning of the trail is this: Go to Chinatown: on the corner of Chang and Ching there you will find that the phone will ring. What then you might ask? Answer the phone to find your next task. You have one hour." Gloating at the top of his cracked voice, the Big Head killer was gone in a rush through the window again.

* * *

Nadine could not scream, she could not cry out. She was gagged and blindfolded - she had no idea where she was being taken. It had all happened so quickly. Where was Jack? Where were the police? And then a stifling blackness overcame her and she knew no more.

* * *

Nadine awoke feeling sick and groggy. She still couldn't see. Her whole head hurt. A lot. She sat up. She felt really dizzy. She touched her head. Her entire head was swathed in bandages. Some other form of restraint, probably. She stood up. She could stand, so she couldn't be too badly hurt. Her memories came flooding back. Well, if she were to escape, she couldn't do so blindfolded. She gingerly unwound the bandages from around her aching head. It took a long time, unwinding and unwinding as the mass of bandaging gradually decreased and she carefully picked them out of her thick hair. At last, the remaining bandages came away and she gave a little start at what she saw in front of her. A livid green face, framed with thick dark hair. The face was mask like, with a pointed nose and chin and angular and sharp cheeks. And it was so green. Bright green and smooth as if made of green rubber or latex. She took a step back and realised she was looking into a mirror! No, it couldn't be. She felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and touched her cheek. The apparition in the mirror did the same. It had her hair, unmistakably. She glanced around her. She was stark naked in what appeared to be a gleaming sterile, surgical theater. She had just arisen from an operating table around which the bandages were strewn. She ran up to the mirror and grabbed at her livid, green face. It still hurt to touch. There was no seam or gap. She wasn't wearing a mask, but then it was her own face, surgically altered.

"Good to see you so well, after the surgery." The cracked voice of Bighead. His heavy footfalls made the floor shake. He was so grossly obese.

"What have you d-done to me?" she said weakly. "Am I permanently disfigured?"

"No, there is something magical about a mask. It conceals one face and makes another. You have a mask for a face. Why do you want your old one back?"

Nadine realised that this was her lot, and burst into tears that flowed freely down her freakishly altered visage.

Bighead's horrible grin widened. "Now we belong together and you and I will consummate our lust. I speak not of love, but pure lust."

"Never!" cried Nadine. "I wouldn't touch you to scratch you."

"I can surgically alter your entire head if you like, so your cascade of hair is gone," admonished Bighead.

Not the hair. Nadine's hair was her pride and joy. She had already lost her pretty face and without her hair she would be as much an ugly freak as this monster... She sagged with a sigh, the fight gone out of her.

"Alright, but this counts as rape."

Lying on a huge bed with a grotesque head piece shaped like the Bighead monster, Nadine lay back, filled with fear. Where was Jack? Would he do as Bighead ordered? What could she do? She had already been mutilated. Was she really about to be raped?


	2. Chapter 2

**A Transfer of Power**

Jack hurried to the corner of Ching Street and Chang Street where a phone was indeed ringing. He picked it up and heard Bighead's chilling voice: "How's this for a rhyme? What place is freezing all the time?"

"Freezing all the time? What place is freezing all the time? What sort of riddle is that?" Exclaimed Jack.

A young Chinese man with thick pebbly glasses was passing by and overheard. "It's coordinates," he pointed out. "The Greenwich Meridian line is 0 degrees longitude."

Of course! Jack hopped onto the train to Greenwich, soon arriving at the Greenwich observatory at the site where the Meridian line is clearly marked. His dash up the hill had tired him out and he was sweating all over on top of feeling sick with nerves and anxiety for Nadine. This point is near the Greenwich observatory and museum and remains a popular tourist site. The night was drawing in now and the place was abnormally quiet. Why was everything deserted? Why had the lights gone out. The shadows seemed to be hemming in from all sides. But at the point where the Meridian line is clearly marked there was now a signpost that seemed to glow lurid green. It had the image of Bighead's grinning face on it. He peered at it and saw a message marked:

One shade tells the truth and the other will lie,

Obey the right one, or you will die.

One question is all you may ask,

Try to ask more and fail the task.

Suddenly two shadows with reared up in front of him and his heart thudded. Each had two blue points glowing like eyes. They glared down at him.

This rung a bell with Jack. It was that trick of finding out which of two creatures was a liar and which was truthful. Fortunatey he already knew the answer. His dad had first told him and it had cropped up on cartoons a couple of times as well.

Arbitrarily he turned to the shadow to his right. "If I asked you which of you I should obey, what would your answer be?"

"I would say that the other shadow is the one you must obey." It's voice echoed strangely in his head.

"Aha!" He turned to the other shadow. "Tell me what to do."

"Congratulations. You must follow me. Bighead awaits you, true believer." He followed the shadow by keeping his gaze fixed on the blue points of its eyes and the other one seemed to melt away in the gloom.

Jack noticed the shade was leading him back in the direction of the London Underground.

"What does Bighead want with me?"

"Bighead was worshipped once. The Mask was stolen from its rightful place where its wearer was revered. One who worships him must be brought to him."

They descended the staircase at the tube station and then the shade approached the wall and lo and behold! The entrance to a dark passageway opened up for them and Jack set off into the gloom, following the two points of glimmering light. They descended another staircase that Jack had never known was there, down and down, all the way to Bighead's lair...

* * *

Nadine had recovered from the surgery much more quickly than she would have dared guess possible. And this was just as well, because she had had to have missionary position intercourse with the bloated horror. The bed was in another gleaming surgical theater, but it was soft enough. However, she had screamed when Bighead first rolled on top of her... but now she didn't know what to think. She felt guilty that her body had responded with such vigour. She had no idea how long it had gone on for. It seemed like hours. Bighead had put a lot of fluid into her. More of course than was natural, but then he was supernaturally empowered.

"You know what also brings passion?" growled Bighead. He had been contentedly stuffing down what appeared to be an elephant leg stuffed with olives that he had conjured out of thin air, but now he paused to gloat. "I'll tell you what. It's that a true believer will come. And he's coming to rescue you, my sexy freak. And he will beat the odds and get here, make no mistake. He'll be here soon."

Nadine winced. Even though none of this was her fault, she felt an awful sense of guilt as though she had betrayed Jack. "Jack, my Jack, would do anything for me. Let me go now. Jack and I belong together."

"You have a mask for a face," grated Bighead. "Your pretty human face was nipped and tucked away, then promptly incinerated. But a true believer like Jack might be alone among men and might see past appearances. We will see."

Nadine was feeling mad hope flaring up in her. Even this monster had to admit Jack was a great guy. Jack would save her and everything would be alright. She touched her green cheek gingerly, feeling the sharp angle of her cheek. It felt sore, but not nearly as bad. She could feel her fingertips touching the smooth green surface. It was part of her, but Jack would see past her appearance, because he had to...

A shadow fell across them, blocking out the harsh lights of the theater. In the shadow, two points of blue lights glowed.

"The true believer comes!" Echoed the voice.

"The true believer will petition in the main theater," declared Bighead. He stood and was suddenly clad in blood red armour. Nadine shuddered.

Bighead snapped his fingers. "Come on, freaky, the answer to you questions is here." A hospital gown appeared beside Nadine and she hastily donned it. She followed Bighead into the main operating theater although it gave her the chills to be back here again. Her heart leaped as she saw Jack crouching low on the ground and she started forward, but felt herself collide with an invisible force-field.

"Jack!" she cried. She was desperate just to look into his hazel eyes again and run her fingers through his curly hair...

He looked up at her as she stood beside Bighead and his eyes widened. "Truly you are all-powerful, Bighead. You have created a Mask that cannot be removed. The Mask of your creation is better than the original Mask which was not. Nadine's Mask cannot be removed, isn't that right?"

Nadine swallowed, confused. What was this about?

"That is correct," growled Bighead, "non believers would try to be smart and ask whether I could create a Mask that could not be removed. Well I can and it is better than the first Mask which can be removed."

"This must be demonstrated to those non-believers so they can be humiliated before they are horribly punished," said Jack.

"It can be demonstrated. Like so," said Bighead and pulled at his Mask. There was a flash and there he was. Just a grossly obese man with short red hair, holding a crude, jade mask.

"NOW! NADINE! i BELIEVE IN YOU!" Screamed Jack.

Nadine felt cold strength course through her and she whirled round and grabbed at the Mask the fat man held and wrested it from his grip and exerting all her newfound strength, snapped it in half. There was a scream and a ghostly cloud emanated from it, pouring into her mouth so that it filled her with more strength. The power of the original Mask had nowhere else to go, but into her. She was already remodeled to be its receptacle. Fully charged up she punched hard and the fat man and he groaned and fell hard onto the ground.

Jack stood up. "My true love, I always believed in you. That is why I am a true believer. We belong together."

He rushed forwards into her waiting arms.


End file.
